'Very desperate' Trump is 'hyper-aware' that his 'incoherent ramblings' are a problem: author

07 September 2024

A casual observer watching former President Donald Trump's campaign speeches in the 2024 campaign cycle may notice they've become increasingly more unhinged compared to his 2016 and 2020 stump speeches. Now, in the home stretch of his third presidential campaign, the 45th president of the United States may finally be aware of how he's coming off to voters.

In a recent article for the Guardian, writer Chris McGreal reported that Trump's latest "incoherent ramblings" — often on topics not related to current political issues like sharks and fictional serial killer Hannibal Lecter — appear to be a growing concern among the ex-president's campaign team. This was evidenced by comments he made at a Pennsylvania campaign rally attempting to reframe his meandering speeches as "do[ing] the weave."

"You know what the weave is? I’ll talk about, like, nine different things that they all come back brilliantly together. And it’s like friends of mine that are like English professors, they say: ‘It’s the most brilliant thing I’ve ever seen,’" Trump said. "But the fake news, you know what they say, ‘He rambled.’ It’s not rambling. What you do is you get off a subject to mention another little tidbit, then you get back on to the subject, and you go through this and you do it for two hours, and you don’t even mispronounce one word."

Trump hasn't so far been scrutinized much in the press for his often confusing campaign speeches, which in the earlier parts of the campaign may have been due to the media's fixation on 81 year-old President Joe Biden's repeated gaffes.

Biden's age was the main Achilles heel of his doomed reelection campaign, as evidenced by the coverage surrounding former Department of Justice special counsel Robert Hur's report exonerating him in his classified documents probe, in which he referred to Biden as an "elderly man with a poor memory." That coverage hit a fever pitch after Biden's widely panned debate performance in June, which ultimately led to him exiting the 2024 race and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris.

But now that Trump is facing a much younger and more vibrant and vigorous opponent, questions about how his age and mental acuity affect the viability of his candidacy have become increasingly more frequent. Author Timothy O'Brien, who wrote the book "TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald," posited that the same accusations of being too old to occupy the White House are now dogging Trump. One unnamed European leader even reportedly mentioned to a Democratic U.S. senator during this summer's NATO summit that they were perplexed about how Trump's rants haven't been discussed more by political journalists.

“The reason he’s now offering these convoluted explanations of his speech patterns in his public appearances is because he’s hyper-aware that people have noted that he’s making even less sense than he used to,” O'Brien told the Guardian. “What we’re seeing now is a reflection of someone who’s very troubled and very desperate.”

"[H]e no longer has the foil of Joe Biden to bounce off of. Biden had become so visibly diminished and the media was more ready to take Biden to task on it on a regular basis. That allowed Trump to skate by," O'Brien continued. "[H]e now often looks ridiculous or unhinged, unfocused or very, very old."

Earlier this week, Trump gave a confusing answer to a question about his plan to lower child care costs while he was addressing the New York Economic Club. He never directly said what he would do outside of a vague comment about taxing foreign countries, but he mentioned his daughter Ivanka, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida) and called America a "failing nation."

SiriusXM host Dean Obeidallah likened Trump's comments on child care to a "dementia clinic." And political commentator Digby said the ex-president "sounds like a 4th grader who didn’t read the book." And Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell noted that she "can’t even find a complete sentence" when reading the transcript of his comments.

Click here to read the Guardian's report in full.

From Your Site Articles